Synodiporia OOC community

Over the course of (about) five weeks and four liminal events, the Powers The Be will prepare for Phase III of the contest they (and we) call Synodiporia by dividing up the remaining Travelers evenly between them. After this event, every new Traveler will be marked the moment they first appear in Liminal Space.

What’s this going to look like in practice?

For four weeks, while unique situations present themselves in Liminal Space, Travelers who have already been marked will be separated from those who have not by a transparent barrier dividing Liminal Space in two. Those with teleportation skills can still cross the barrier - it’s more a cosmetic touch than anything else. Slowly, Travelers will disappear from the Unmarked side, and re-appear on the Marked side, until everyone has been Marked.

Travelers, when Marked, or if already Marked, will have the chance to have a brief encounter with the Major Arcana Marking them (or who Marked them before). Given just how many of these threads the moderators will have to write, they will happen a few Arcana at a time, and players should expect delays in the completion of these threads. Which Arcana are having conversations each week will be noted on the posts themselves.

Characters who have not yet been marked should comment on the screened post linked here with their character name. In a screened comment, they will be presented with the list of Arcana who might be interested in marking them. If any obvious choices are missing, or any absolutely, positively, unacceptable choices are presented, a substitution or veto can be placed. However, players cannot choose specifically which Acana marks their character, and cannot choose not to be marked. Because we are giving each Arcana an equal number of Marks for this event, we ask that players only exercise their veto if they must - the logistics are already pretty complex!

If your character has already been Marked, since no skill proofs are necessary for Marks after this point, your character will receive a free Mark Skill instead - a new category of skills we will be unveiling in late November. (Note: This is separate from the planned free regular skill this month.)

The scheduling for all of this has been made much more complex by Matt’s being away for election work, necessitating delays in rolling out new pages we hoped to have up before this event began. We will all be working our hardest to finish the page changes before the holidays, so that in January, when Phase III gets going, all the new information and new pages will be readily available.

What will everyone be doing when they’re not being Marked? Well, the Liminal Events we have planned for this period of time should keep characters busy with player-driven content. In Week One, characters, while navigating a mazelike Liminal Space, will see some of their CR differently: illusions will make their friends appear to be Someone Significant from their past, which may spark awkward confessions, squabbles, or very confusing reunions. In Week Two, as characters explore a very linear, obstacle-heavy Liminal Space, they will be randomly affected by areas which make them behave more like the archetype associated with one or more Tarot Arcana - not necessarily the ones who have Marked them. A list of archetypes will be provided for reference. In Week Three, characters can, at player-option, flash back to relive previous infiltrations, in a Liminal Space with images and themes drawn from past jaunts. Finally, in Week Four, characters will receive a preview of some of the dangers ahead of them, as the Arcana attempt to explain, as directly as they know how, why they desire human help.

The current Liminal Event is very low-key, to give everyone a chance to relax and backthread in Digital Frontier while we welcome new characters to the game this next week! At player's option, one of their characters may be shackled or chained to one or more other characters, and these shackles may be easy or difficult to remove. If you want to be temporarily stuck with a close friend, someone you dislike, or a complete stranger, plot below!

If your character is planning on trying to use the payphone in the lobby, comment under the phone toplevel below. Tags will be slow in those threads, as well as in plot backthreads with Trumps & NPCs - but those threads will continue until resolved, unless you'd like to handwave them.

A Jaunt summary post will be up in a day or two, and State of the Game & Purgatory plotting around the 25th.

First, some housekeeping: with Aaron stepping down from her mod position, Meta, previously list helper mod, is now assuming the full mod position of Queen of the Lists. All hail to your new overworked overlady. Please let her know when a list isn’t up to date, and she’ll attack it with new data as soon as possible.

Second: starting next Jaunt, plot-important infiltrators will receive a bonus skill if they make extra Skill AC (60+ comments). We really can’t stress enough how important it is that the people committing to plot-important roles be active and communicative and take initiative. We’d really like this to be a way that PCs can be involved in shaping the structure of plots & events, and so that NPCs will need to be used less often for plot hints & resolutions.

Third: after discussing the matter for the last few days, the mod team has arrived at the conclusion that this Jaunt has misfired to the point where it doesn’t make sense to try and salvage it in the available time, nor does it make sense to extend it. Instead, we’ll be concluding the plot early and beginning a Liminal event that will stretch until the next Jaunt begins in early December. Given the inactivity and lack of communication problems we’ve had due to health & scheduling issues, we want to make absolutely certain there’s plenty for players to do during the Liminal Event, so we’re tying it into the metaplot.

There’s going to be a glitch with the Jaunt. As of a post going up later this evening, there will be a sudden telepathic babble of voices, the sky will go white, all non-Traveler people, animals, and zombies will vanish, and time will apparently freeze. Falling objects will stop where they are. Liminal Space gravity rules will apply. Technology that was operational will remain operational (lights that are on, motors that are running, etc.) but flipping switches and turning will change nothing - what’s on stays on and what’s off stays off.

After a moment, the telepathic cacophony will fade, but time will remain frozen. Infiltrators will be restored to their investigator selves, and it won’t take long to realize that everyone is now within about sixteen square blocks of decaying cityscape, and the white sky beyond is in fact an impenetrable barrier. Everyone is once again in Liminal Space, cut off from the rest of the world. However, there will be a few important differences.

1. Every object from the jaunt will retain object permanence, which will make finding food and water for the next two weeks a little more doable.

2. Certain areas of the cityscape will experience time distortions. In minor distortions, people can watch everything around them speed up, slow down, or reverse. In major distortions, age up/age down effects will apply, allowing characters to temporarily interact with past or future versions of one another. If you’d like a future version to incorporate hints or details of upcoming jaunts, send an email or private plurk to Matt & he’ll see what tantalizing details he can hook you up with.

3. Other areas of the city will have spatial distortions - selective gravity, teleportation, impossible spaces that loop around one another… or size distortions that temporarily grow or shrink characters, so that we may temporarily have Godzilla-sized or ant-sized Travelers.

4. Characters with the Questing Sense or Fool’s Favor skills may also email or PP Matt in order to receive information at this time.

For those of you who were enjoying the Jaunt setting; there’s a chance we may revisit it in a retooled format after a few months have passed, but right now we have plenty of other Jaunts in the pipeline to focus on.

Make plans, ask questions, or leave us feedback as usual in the comments below! We really appreciate your understanding, and we hope the sudden change of pace isn’t too jarring - things obviously weren’t working as they were, and this is the best solution we could come up with.

Glitch Plot Plans | Questions | Feedback

At the conclusion on the Jaunt, on August 5th, everyone will be drawn to Liminal Space… which will be a little different than usual. Rather than simply a combination of two environments, it will be a chaotic combination of them, a nonsensical mansion… every room in it resembling something drawn from the Travelers’ own homeworlds, and in fact, from the Travelers’ homes. It’s a chance for nostalgia and homesickness, for uncomfortable revelations, or for anything else characters want to explore or share about where they come from… and for those who want, it ends there.

But for others, it can go deeper. Exploring the house, Travelers can find an unusual number of dungeon portals in the form of mirrors, and they’re not only for characters doing reclaims. All the portals connect to a maze of carnival funhouse mirrors, in which the characters can see themselves, rather differently than they’d expect. Older or younger, genderflipped, traumatized where they are well-adjusted or vice-versa, villainous where they are heroic… and if they look for long enough, the image and the reflection may temporarily change places, leaving the character altered for anywhere from a few hours to a few days, at the player’s discretion. Anyone trying to reclaim an idled character will find themselves trapped in such a mirror, dealing with a decidedly sinister reflection their Fellow Travelers will have to help them defeat or escape…

On August 12th, while the portals to the mirror-dungeons will remain open, Liminal Space will shift again. That taste of home sweet home is gone… replaced by a train station in the grips of a natural disaster. Fire, flooding, cave-in and collapse… fissures in the floor opening onto seemingly endless falls… but only on the empty, trainless tracks, leaving the main platform safe and clear. There are, of course, timetables clearly displayed, showing routes departing to Paramo, En Zhenming, Thalassia, and Blackbanner Port. All trains, wherever they are, apparently depart at 00:00. And above every train schedule, there are blank, gold-rimmed clock faces with neither numbers nor arms.

It may be just another strange Liminal Space. And it may be the best chance to to understand the trumps so far. Interested players are welcome to form small groups and explore the more dangerous reaches of the station, or just hang out by the newspaper stands and snack kiosks - participation in the mini-event is completely optional.

And of course, on August 19th, the Pirate/Mermaid Event begins (plotting for that will be up soon).

A Slice of Home plotting | Mirror Dungeon Plotting | Train Station Plotting | Questions